Un-denial regulars Charles & Chris (aka paqnation) collaborated on this essay exploring the psyche of doomers.
They discuss in detail characteristics common to the doomers they know. I have not observed the same common characteristics in the overshoot aware people I follow, and I elaborate a bit on this at the end of the essay.
It will be interesting to hear from others in the comments what they observe about doomers.
Introduction
Today, we are exploring a topic, which is rarely addressed in the doomosphere. We are not going to describe material limits and extraction trends, evaluate which DEFCON level is currently on, uncover the early and now increasingly advanced signs of collapse, speculate on the origin, mechanism or inevitability of our collective demise, attempt to predict the exact date of societal breakdown, lament over denial, wonder if Good(TM) and nature will prevail, or debate in which exquisite torments the human species will go extinct. But rather, for once, we focus on the personal: we observe the observer.
This is a topic Charles had wanted to explore for quite a long time but didn’t know how to. Following recent comments at un-Denial, Chris privately inquired if he was detecting some bargaining or desperation. This led to an interesting observation: we both recognize how precarious this fleeting moment is in human experience. However, we arrived at different accepting states: Charles tenaciously follows his heart, at his small scale, with faith, whatever the outcome, whereas Chris lives with kindness, relieved to witness the demise of this destructive species. So what would be the common characteristics of doomers? How does this impact their personal life, in particular in their social interactions? And what are some of the strategies that they can deploy to balance their nature?
Disclaimer: we are not trained psychologists. So, although we drew from our personal experiences and observations, there is no claim of any general validity. We still hope this may be of some use, especially, for those, increasingly numerous, who are just starting their journey down doomers’ lane: beware since this is a bumpy route. If not, then just read this piece lightly, on the beach as you would a summer article from Vogue magazine.
Birth and Discovery
Our study starts from the second best resource for any serious contemporary heavily funded research project: Wikipedia (the first one being some AI-powered scam-selling chatbot).
The page on doomers states that they “are people who are extremely pessimistic or fatalistic about global problems”. Well, that’s clearly the description of doomers from the external point of view of a normie. While it is true doomers think most exclusively at the global scale, they would disagree about having a pessimistic perspective. For them, the rest of society suffers from optimism bias, even denial. They would readily argue, some even ferociously, their outlook is realistic, if not the only possible outcome. There is a story behind this stance.
Nobody is born a doomer. Even if there may be some psychological predisposition, anyone can become a doomer. The typical doomer didn’t even willingly decide to become one, in the same way he would start tennis. This is a condition one develops when bitten by a radioactive spider: maybe he read some piece in a newspaper about the end of oil, or was shaken by some internet news about deforestation trends. With the impacts of climate change starting to be tangible, these animals can be encountered in the wild a lot more easily than they used to be. Most of, if not all of, these articles end on a positive note: how some substitutes are being worked on, or some politicians are about to regulate, or how anybody can participate in harm reduction by behaving as a responsible consumer. The soon to become doomer finds himself unknowingly at a turning point, he stands just before the gate which will eventually shake his world upside-down: he can accept the convenient conclusions at face value and forget, or start asking questions.
If he takes the red pill, a series of discoveries and shocks about the “true” nature of his world awaits him. This is the start of a long learning phase, a period of gradual uncovering and revelations. Unrolling the wool ball, teaches him rudiments in fields as diverse as mathematics, history, ecology, system dynamic, physics, evolutionary biology, geology, political science, sociology (and maybe even linguistics), psychology… Every day, he spends multiple hours reading books, listening to experts, skimming the internet in search for obscure blogs, hidden gems of knowledge. And gradually, piece by piece, he patiently assembles a small holistic inner “model of everything”, a mini-world comparable to a computer simulation. With this model, he hopes to understand the world, in its entirety, not only in its current state, but also its origins and future dynamic. He constantly refines the model, incorporates new findings. And he always comes up with the same, disappointing, but inescapable answer: 42. Scratch… Rewind… Sorry, wrong story… The Soon to Be All Ending Catastrophe.
Growth and Action
Once he is completely convinced of the folly of conventional wisdom, the doomer starts to act. In doing so, note that he is still following a very conventional cultural pattern: identify a problem then act in order to reach a solution.
His motivations vary according to his nature: inflect the global dynamic, avert the crash, if only for his group, lessen the blow, or deal with personal guilt or anger. He acts differently according to who he is and what he values: he may become an activist, teach other, learn to live thriftily, disconnect from the machine, travel, even follow a spiritual path. He tries to spread the word, finds his tribe. He may be learning new skills: growing food, doing preserves, managing a stock of perishable goods, metal-work, carpentry, communication, horticulture, bushcraft, homesteading, cooking, knitting, hunting… In some cases, this may go as far as to change him into an accomplished survivalist, a hermit, or even a pagan druid. He is forward-looking, cautious. He likes to stay on the safe side, keep margins of errors. Simultaneously, he is innovating, willing to take risks to explore non-conventional paths. He perceives the unexpected and plans for it. The doomer walks the talk, he is ready to step out of his comfort zone, experiment with activities he doesn’t necessarily (initially) enjoy. This all proves his tenacity, and that he is willing to make genuine sacrifices for the greater good. He is resilient, independent, autonomous. He does not need to rely and may even be defiant towards authority, central power.
This is a time of radical changes: the slow intellectual maturation process of the preceding phase is brought to fruition. This is also a constructive phase in the trajectory of the doomer. He has impacts, some he is unaware of. He can shock other people who may initially reject his perspective, but won’t forget. He rings the alarm bell, plays the societal role of the canary, shows alternative ways of living, out of the norm. Overall, he is able to nudge the collective perception of reality, instill doubt in the official narrative. But until it is the right time, this will not, this cannot scale up.
He thinks global, he expects to see global changes. So he eventually takes notice of the great gap between his efforts and expectations.
Stagnation and Isolation
At this point, he can feel pretty down. The beverage from the doomer’s chalice is about to turn sour. He may have paid, a sometimes pretty heavy, price for following this trail: maybe he lost all interest in his work and was fired, or he was abandoned by friends after repetitive bouts of anger, divorced his wife who couldn’t bear his constant mulling. Seeing the normies still going on with it, his life may not feel as enjoyable: the tasteless military canned food, the cold showers, the lack of finance, the crazy entourage, the aging and aching body, the absence of children’ laughter. Sometimes it feels all he achieved was only to travel down the social ladder and preemptively self-destruct. He may regret his sacrifices. All for nothing.
It seems the doomer is particularly vulnerable and obnoxious in his social interactions. Traveling for so long outside of the societal norm, having to constantly battle one’s beliefs in opposition to the group, is corrosive. It has forged his identity in a way that few can appreciate his company. The doomer is eternally focused on future and grandiose issues, to the point he may disregard immediate concerns or current concrete people’s suffering. This can easily and rightfully be felt as selfishness. It seems he eternally postpones the time he will allow himself to live, to be happy, to be. Instead, it is constant high alert: prepare, anticipate, protect, hide…
More importantly even, he feels he is not being listened to. If only they would follow his plan. If only they would all behave reasonably like himself. However, he never really acknowledges the other party either. He has only one channel of communication: verbal mental logic, within his own little “model of everything” at that. Maybe, he doesn’t understand the other modes of communication, doesn’t know they exist. He will invariably steer discussions towards collapse, like a reliable magnet. He feels it is his duty of explaining the world to other. So he often ends up sounding like a patronizing self-righteous bastard preaching from his ivory tower, a clear know-it-all. He stubbornly offers depressing tales of defeats without any room for breathing. He will not tolerate any difference of opinion or alternative views, about something which is, after all, to a large degree unknown and unknowable. It is never enough, no “solution” can work. No amount of preparation will do, no effort matters, it is never enough. Doesn’t it seem like the opposite, and very similar, side of the growth mentality? And then he rambles about his preferred course of action: the ultimate solution in a long list of solutions which all try to solve problems brought about previous solutions. Some kind of “final solution” of a new kind. Sounds totally reasonable to him. He has lost touch with society. He is now entirely engulfed in a handmade world of his own making, his precious.
If he can control it, a doomer with children can certainly not allow himself to dive, in their presence, that far within the depths of his dark psyche. This would be a sure way to crush them and repeat the curse down the next generation (in the small probability, there is a next generation ;). Are we seeing here a hint of what lies behind many doomer’s mask of cold-hearted objective thinking?
So he avoids social interactions, hides far away to protect oneself and others. His experience of the now, forever tainted by the future imagined catastrophe. A continuous mourning over that which has not yet happened.
Hitting diminishing returns, the doomer’s dynamic has gradually entirely morphed into a nihilistic descent, a downward spiral. The tryptic of fear, anger and sadness overwhelms him. Depression can hit. His activity, fueled by a now sterile obsession, turns compulsive. He keeps on beating the dead horse, eventually becoming a lone addict, fulfilling the prophecy before its time, a potent curse.
Elements of Doomer’s Psychology
Let us pause here for a moment. Being a doomer implies the bondage to a process of both light and darkness: it arises, grows inward, expresses outwards and decays. Why are some people more prone to become doomers than others? Is there some root cause, or is just fluke? And, more importantly maybe, is there life after death (of the arc of doom ;)? Before we attempt to answer these questions, let us recapitulate the psychological traits that seem common to most doomers.
Doomers have an unusual relation with spatial and temporal scales. They see far ahead. This makes them very patient when they need to reach any far-fetched objective. But they need some effort to be present to integrate what’s in their vicinity. They will easily switch off and ruin their immediate experience whenever they are enthralled in thoughts: they can miss many bright aspects of life, the multiple hints of love around them. Especially, since they tend to automatically filter everything which does not interest them. That which does not constitute a threat. They rarely stand still but always run “one step ahead”, thinking about the next move, making predictions. Paradoxically, they can be extremely sensitive to early warning signals, which for them, stand out amidst flows of data. At times, they experience information overload and that may be the real reason they need to isolate themselves. They will integrate in their mental models small details which may have large implications and be able to draw surprisingly accurate conclusions or sometimes turn out radically wrong.
Doomers are very cerebral: they think incessantly. Their inner monologue slithers unabated like a powerful tireless snake. They easily end up caught in obsessive mental loops. This grants them an exceptionally strong will, on the fringe of stubbornness. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to live in constant antagonism with most of society. Otherwise, they wouldn’t persevere in things they do not particularly enjoy just to prepare for a potential negative outcome sometimes in the far future (less far now).
Here the figure of Noah, building the gigantic ark on its own, with the help of God only instead of fossil fuels, may come to mind.
And they often excel at thinking: they are rational, logical, uncompromising, independent intellects, who do not trust nor rely blindly on figures of authority. Naturally, they respect people of high integrity, and are particularly skilled at detecting scammers, which they despise with a passion. Even if, sometimes, only the Trickster can allow irreconcilable demands of society to unfold, for better or worse. They work ceaselessly on an impossible project: their intellect wants to encompass even that which cannot, cage absolutely everything in the box of the mind. This is the ultimate quest for total knowledge, the final conquest of light over darkness. Their perfectionist control freak inner voice shouts: “Let them all be statistics, cells in excel sheets! I will make their life perfect. I have a plan.” In combination with their obsessive nature, this makes them inflexible figures easily drawn to dogmatism. Never face a doomer in a confrontational argument on his preferred topic.
Unfortunately for them, this rigidity affects them equally (You shall love your neighbor as yourself): they won’t easily allow themselves to live spontaneously, free from any clear pre-set goal. In that, they ironically have totally internalized the very core of industrial productivism. They have difficulties dealing with their emotions, sometimes even completely severed from them. This may be the key of one of their contradiction: the desire to protect an abstract entity, the whole species, while not noticing the immediate needs of the actual person just in front of them.
The next item on the list may be a consequence of their mental fixation, or just a characteristic prevailing in most dwellers of the modern world. Most doomers seem to have issues with their image of self. It might be incorrectly calibrated: either under or over-valued. Since they believe living conditions are about to become dramatically harsher than they already are, they feel natural to deploy more efforts and expect less rewards than the rest of the pack. Ironically this makes them an ideal target for ruthless practitioners of growth. You may hear them profess implacable credos of flamboyant macho bravado. Are these genuine expressions of their resilience or hints of a lack of confidence, of an underlying fear? “Hard times don’t last, hard people do” can be read in the doomer’s entry of Wikipedia. How much of a doomer’s rational rhetoric hides a self aggrandizing fantasy?
At the opposite end of the spectrum, some doomers display the arrogance of humanism dialed up to the end of the gauge. Isn’t the idea that the collective behavior ought to be controlled, the trajectory of the species planned in order to maximize survivability or minimize suffering, a delusion completely devoid of any humility?
Many doomers identify with a collective: the group of all humans or the whole living planet as a unique organism, Gaïa. Otherwise, how could the consequences of the activities of the whole species be a reason for personal shame? It can be suspected that some doomers have an even more unconventional notion of self: either setting only fuzzy boundaries, or simply considering it as an arbitrary construct of the mind. Who can say what’s what? Holobionts come to mind.
This is all surprising, isn’t it? We would have expected meeting a Cassandra-like creature instead, it’s the Carl Jung archetype of Apollo which seems to be emerging. According to Wikipedia the Apollo archetype:
“personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony. The Apollo archetype favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over subjective intuition.”
Apollo, the bearer of light. The enlightenment. The statue of liberty. The Apollo space program. The template of a now bygone era. All his creations turned into a gigantic farce: advanced mathematics powered AI to generate pornographic images of lascivious beings endowed with cat or androgynous attributes (no, this sentence was not generated by a chatbot); extravagant expenditure of engineering, fuel and other resources only to send a few tons of metal into space at 0.00015% the distance to Mars; feats of programming, automation, slavery, life stripping exploitation to publish these words into the great silicon web of matter-less opinions, to reach you…
We can now better understand the doomers’ fascination with derelict places, decay, the morbid. His thoughts are crystallized on the edge of the observable, the end of his light. The fixation aimed at some imagined brief moment in the future: a turning point, a tipping point, the end times, the apocalypse, total annihilation, extinction. Before this point, the dumb masses rule. After, it the doomer won’t need to struggle anymore because all will be over. He is proven right, it’s a victory, a Pyrrhic victory, at last, just before the closing curtain. More importantly maybe, everybody will then experience the same discomfort he finds himself in right now.
Tentative Explanation: Unconscious Root Motivation
This section will be more hypothetical: it’s an attempt at finding some plausible root causes of the doomer’s dynamic.
On the surface, doomers seem to be disappointed idealists. Humanists who are not accepting the failed (in comparison to their own standard) experiment that either the species or this specific culture proves daily to be. They long for a world of reason, beauty or harmony. They simply can’t really get over the large gap between their expectations and reality.
But, really, maybe, idealism was born out of the necessity to compensate an even deeper issue, a trauma, in some form or another. Doomers are in a state of shock. It would explain the fear. It would explain the challenges with the self.
It would explain the addictive behavior. It would explain the propensity for seclusion. It would explain the dissociation from emotions. It would explain the tendency to preemptively put oneself in conditions harsher than needs to be. It would explain the elitism of placing oneself above and untouched, as a neutral observer. It would explain the constant assessment of danger. These are all habits and defense mechanisms adopted during past stressful circumstances. Doomers have been hard-wired, psychologically trained in tough times. What they imagine of the future, is a reflection of their past, now buried in the unconscious. In a way, they are optimized for survival in extreme situations and wither during lax times.
Let us not dwell too long on that, as this is highly circumstantial. Everyone will judge for himself the validity of this hypothesis. Let us just stress the fact that trauma comes in various degrees and does not correspond only to a one-time brutal event but may also be activated by a continuous feeling of danger during childhood.
Family history could play an important role here. We are almost all offsprings of horrors: genocides (Native American, holocausts), slavery, wars; killers, rapists, survivors. There have been so many tragedies in relatively recent human history, that almost no-one is psychologically untouched. So maybe it’s just the normality of life.
In contrast, the western middle class is materially extravagantly sheltered, while totally dependent on an overarching, psychologically oppressive system: replete with propaganda, disheveled morality, betrayals, tricks and manipulations of the mind. This fosters wild imaginations, delusions, various degrees of psychosis. A bit like industrial farm chickens on steroids (which they are not), many haven’t had the opportunity to grow up fully in balance. Diminished humans. Living in this unnatural, bullying society, considering the prospect of shortages, observing from afar, through the distorting lens of the media, the implacable destruction of multiple life forms on the planet is, in itself, enough for trauma. And we are back to a circular argument.
Maturation Out of the Loop of Doom
Are there happy doomers, content with their mental state? Probably.
But doomerism is usually a heavy load to carry. So one might reasonably want to mature past this state, grow out of the addiction and self-destruction. If doomerism is really a consequence of a form of trauma, then it is only natural, this will take some time to resolve. Hopefully, there are many strategies, which, in time, can bear their fruits. These strategies are not a rejection of the rational conclusion of the doomer about the state of the world. That’s one thing. It’s rather a movement of further expansion. It is about the recognition of other aspects, which can coexist with the certainty of collapse:
- recognition of the destructive effect of doomerism on oneself,
- recognition of the limits of individual power, to understand and control,
- recognition of the bounded responsibility of oneself in global issues,
- recognition of the load that one carries,
- recognition of the diversity: of forms and beings, down to the way of seeing the world,
- recognition of the emotions, past and current: anxiety, pessimism, shame, despair, fear, anger, sadness,
- recognition of that which lies in one’s shadow,
- recognition of all the things that are going fine, right now, the love around.
Habits and multiple rationalizations of the mind will naturally present themselves and prevent change. They protect the stability of the psychic equilibrium achieved in reaction to past circumstances. This equilibrium has served its purpose and has now become counterproductive. To break the deadlock, there are multiple small practices, which progressively, gently rectify our stance. There is a lot of activities we may choose from, here are a few non-exhaustive examples:
- breathe, relax, meditate,
- practice compassion, to others, to yourself,
- treat yourself, care for yourself, listen to your needs,
- focus on the small things you have control over, you can handle,
- congratulate yourself, smile to yourself, pat yourself on the back,
- cultivate gratefulness: note the things that go well,
- appreciate the word “enough”,
- find a safe zone, find your tribe,
- express yourself,
- perform service to others,
- confront your fears by overcoming real world hardships, travel the world, gain confidence,
- observe events, without tainting, without trying to anticipate,
- study your thoughts: see their origins, differentiate between the group’s and yours, observe the repetitions, the patterns, the tricks of the mind,
- keep a log of your predictions: write them down as precisely as possible and then compare with actual events,
- study your emotions, dive in the darkness of the forbidden ones, do not block them, let them unfold, run their full course,
- listen to other people’s viewpoints without jumping to conclusion, pause whenever you feel the urge to react automatically, compare with your viewpoint,
- study family history,
- bring things back to the concrete, root yourself, limit the habit of thinking in generalities,
- consider therapy, follow some form of spiritual practice,
- take the leap of faith, rely on higher intervention, a higher force, abandon control, let life be.
In a way, this is nothing new, already in 2012, Paul Chefurka talked about the inner path and the outer path. This all boils down to experimenting the “outside” while listening to the “inside” until there is no more friction.
Conclusion
Being a doomer is a bit like being an alcoholic. Some are able to drink a few drinks and stop. Other will start with only half a drink and find 13 years of their life has passed by without notice. Although, it is most probably some form of escapism, like Bovarysme, doomerism is grounded in legitimate concerns.
Now, these concerns are reaching gigantic proportion. Everybody can see collapse at their doorstep. Everybody will soon have to deal with the consequences, envisioned by doomers. There are no easy answers, doomers can simply share their journey.
Chris
I was hesitant to team up with Charles for this experiment. I joke about him being my spiritual advisor, but him and I have been going in opposite directions for a while now. I guess my hesitancy was in thinking that this would be too pro human or too spiritual for my taste. I was relieved when he sent me his first draft. I was on board with everything he was saying. IMHO, his analysis about the typical doomer is spot on.
Now I also think we could flip the script and make this piece about the overshoot aware Spiritual person instead. Dive in to see what makes him/her tick. Try to see how they believe what they believe in the face of no evidence whatsoever. And yet they are very well versed to reality and our predicament. Have a feeling that story would sound very similar to the doomer. But that’s a different essay for someone else to tackle.
During this process of back-and-forth notes with Charles, a pattern was emerging. It was clear to me that he was worried about offending the doomer crowd. It was also clear to me that because of his experience of being one himself, he would be able to draw heavily on that, and rather than being offensive, it would be respectful.
On occasion I try to rattle Charles by sending him a shock jock belief of mine or a quote like this one from James at Megacancer. “The story of life: The quest for profit and growth will continue as it has since the first organic cell fissioned. The End.”
Nothing fazes him. In fact, most of the time he ends up liking what I said, or it gives him ideas to come back at me with something better. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Charles is tolerant to pretty much anything. And if you ever have a chance to interact with him outside of un-Denial, do it! He’s much more comfortable with one on one email.
Charles
Writing this piece, I didn’t want to gaslight the doomer: overshoot and collapse are real. Still, I also think, there is a psychological basis, an interplay between the macro and the micro, a link between individual psyches and collective dynamic. I believe material collapse will happen in synchronicity of a mass regulatory psychological event. I hope so: although extremely alluring, this culture is insane. It’s been hard to maintain integrity.
I have been a doomer, a part of me will always remain one. I slowly am retiring. Contemplating, as much as it is granted to me, life peacefully, joyfully, in awe.
I enjoyed very much working with Chris on this piece. More than anything else, I especially appreciate his accepting, encouraging presence, true to his first name as the carrier of Christ.
Rob here with a few thoughts.
I have followed quite a few overshoot aware people over the last 15 years including Gail Zawacki, Nicole Foss, Gail Tverberg, Alice Friedemann, Jay Hanson, Nate Hagens, Dennis Meadows, William Rees, David Korowicz, Jean-Marc Jancovici, Tim Watkins, Jack Alpert, Michael Dowd, Tim Morgan, David J.C. McKay, Tom Murphy, Tim Garrett, William Rees, Charles Hall, Paul Chefurka, Sam Mitchell, Jason Bradford, Andril Zvorygin, Steve St. Angelo, Simon Michaux, Hideaway, xraymike79, James, B, Mike Stasse, Irv Mills, and a few others.
I have not observed in these people many of the characteristics that Charles & Chris think are universal. I do lack visibility into the personal lives of most of these people so perhaps Charles & Chris have access to insights I do not have, or perhaps they follow different people. Hopefully examples of people with the common characteristics that Charles & Chris observe will be provided in the follow-up comments.
What I observe is that the majority (say 80%) of the tiny minority (say 1000 out of 8,000,000,000) people who have become deeply aware of our overshoot predicament tend to become obsessed with the topic and spend a lot of time discussing it. Very rarely an individual, like Paul Chefurka or Nicole Foss, breaks free of the obsession and retreats to live the balance of their life thinking about other things, but this is the exception rather than the norm.
Speaking for myself, I am unable to unsee a cliff we are accelerating towards, and I am fascinated why 8 billion minus maybe 1000 brains of an otherwise extraordinarily intelligent species are unable to understand the obvious, nor to take any actions to minimize the coming suffering of their beloved children and grandchildren.
I also do not think any normal person can easily become a doomer as claimed in the essay above. My personal experience has been that the majority of people are unable to understand the information necessary to become a doomer, regardless of their intelligence or education, or how simply and thoroughly the information is fed to them. In other words, no amount of data or logic is sufficient to explain the reality of overshoot to most people.
I think Dr. Ajit Varki discovered the answer to this mystery with his MORT theory, which also explains why only one super-intelligent species evolved on this planet despite the obvious fitness advantages of high intelligence, and why that species is also the only species that believes in gods.
Perhaps there is a better explanation than MORT for what we observe, but I have not yet found it.
un-Denial 
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/01/21/basket-loads-of-hubris/
Tim Watkins, outstanding!
“This ability to operate in the abstract though, may have an evolutionary root, due to an innate human ability to deny mortality. That is; to exist in every moment knowing it might be one’s last would be so depressing and debilitating that one could not get anything done. And so, natural selection will have favoured those who, while occasionally aware of death in the abstract, could act as if they were immortal. This would explain the in-built optimism bias which allows us to simply assume that things will turn out fine even when the evidence points to the contrary. It would also explain why only a tiny fraction of us – mostly those of the Myers Briggs INTJ personality type, which makes up just 3 percent of the population – seem able to understand risk, but like Cassandra, are destined to be ignored when they raise it.”
Saludos
elmar
LikeLiked by 4 people
Very nice. Watkins is an outstanding thinker and writer.
It’s very rare for anyone to acknowledge Varki’s theory, despite it being the only coherent explanation for our species’ existence and unique behaviors.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very cool. I know that had to make you feel good Rob… I got so excited you would’ve thought I was the inventor of MORT theory.
Also cool because it shows the influence of this site. I’ve seen Tom Murphy’s 2015 Myers Briggs article pop up in a few articles in the last week or so. Monk started a conversation couple weeks ago which led to you linking an old thread of you guys talking about Murphy’s article…. Just confirms what I already knew; the heavy hitters hang out here. Wish they didn’t just lurk, but I’ll take what I can get.
I predict MORT will eventually get the attention it deserves from the overshoot community. Not that it will matter to the big picture… I mean it’s just adding a couple hundred people to the MORT bandwagon, big deal.
But ya, with collapse getting more obvious by the day… and mass denial rising right along with it… I think the influential collapse people will not be able to dismiss MORT so easily anymore… at the very least, the topic of denial will finally get the proper respect and attention.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It did make me feel good, thanks for noticing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi elmar,
Thanks for the link.
On the California wildfires and specifically the empty reservoir, an observation:
My understanding is that, historically, the combination of dry times, Santa Ana winds and high fire risk was in the autumn.
So it made sense for the reservoir to be emptied annually for maintenance during the commonly wet winter season.
Many factors made these fires severe, and a less predictable climate is one of them.
It would be interesting to know what knowledge goes in to the timing of future reservoir maintenance.
Thanks and good health, Weogo
LikeLike
Preptip:
About a year ago I stopped buying fresh mushrooms and switched to cooking with dried mushrooms. I like the more intense flavor of dried mushrooms and their long shelf life without refrigeration.
I pay about $8/Kg for fresh mushrooms and about $42/Kg for dried mushrooms. Assuming 85% water, fresh mushrooms when dried cost $54/Kg making dried mushrooms more economical.
I’ve been paying attention to shelf life and it looks like we can ignore the best-by date of dried mushrooms.
I will still occasionally by some fresh for frying in butter with a steak but otherwise there’s no need for fresh.
I just stocked up on dried mushrooms.
LikeLike
Good rant by Fast Eddy today.
disclaimer: I do not agree with many of his views but they do stimulate thought and a chuckle.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/uk-to-consider-bill-likely-to-cause
LikeLike
Rintrah’s rant today is good for perspective on our predicament.
https://www.rintrah.nl/theyre-not-in-control/
He made me think of this classic video.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have never seen that video Rob. It is fantastic.
I love the music in it too. Ever since I heard in this great Australian film Malcolm.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/wffDBsSgS5Q
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for the tip. Will add Malcolm to my library.
LikeLike
What sane person thinks it is acceptable to wear a bra / bustier to an inauguration?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Two boosters too many?
LikeLiked by 1 person
She was inspired by the famous bra-less wonder from Seinfeld
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hilarious 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t they taste awfully similar to the ones they replaced? So will it be no more vaccine or smart-vaccines?
Pablo Escobar had Virginia Vallejo, Jeff Bezos has Lauren Sanchez. They are both in the business of selling drugs. Just slightly smart people, without any internal brakes who found loops of power. They don’t matter, the loops matter. The loops must run their courses fully. The loops erode themselves naturally.
LikeLike
There must be something in the air today. Everyone is ranting.
Here’s Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder on AI.
LikeLike
So hard to know where it will all in a few years. But I would imagine taking out power and server infrastructure would bring down most AI. That due to collapse or direct attack. Also will there be a functioning supply chain for all that infrastructure.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ditto on bitcoin.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I watched this last night. The nostalgia factor was off the charts. Cool to see this many celebrities be able to put ego aside and get her done. And no phones or any devices distracting them. And the many unique hairstyles, fashion, personalities that used to exist before the online world ruined everything.
The year was 1985 and Ronald Reagan had just started his 2nd term after beating Walter Mondale in the election. The funniest thing about this documentary was trying to picture these celebs arguing about Reagan or Mondale (I doubt there was a single political sentence said all night).
My disdain for humans is mainly about the now. We weren’t saints prior to the internet, but we were much more likeable.
LikeLike
It’s easy to forget how powerful (and mostly negative) a force social media is.
It’s got to be the #1 thing changing human behavior.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I often have major nostalgia for the pre-cellphone era
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember pre-cell phones wearing a pager that displayed a single line of text and being blown away by the technology.
Then my company bought me a Motorola StarTAC flip phone with all the accessories. I was in heaven!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC
LikeLiked by 2 people
LOL, funny to see that thing… I was working for a cell phone company late 90’s/early 00’s. The StarTAC craze was boosted by Tony Soprano having one on the show. I was also in charge of assigning numbers. I got so many bribes and gifts to hook people up with vanity phone numbers.
And no way you could have convinced me or anyone else back then that this technology was gonna end up being detrimental to us all.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I also spent a fortune to buy a Palm Pilot which was a pre-cursor to the smart phone.
LikeLiked by 2 people
My Dad had one of these in the car
LikeLiked by 3 people
I spent most of my life in the cell phone era. What is the biggest difference between now and the pre-cellphone era?
LikeLike
LOL, you almost got me to start writing an essay of all the things I miss… but I’m just gonna go with one:
Having zero access to get a hold of people back then. A typical Saturday for us kids involved leaving the house at 8am and not coming home until dinner at 6pm. If your parents needed you for any reason, they were shit out of luck until 6pm. (unless they got in the car to go looking for you)
This 24/7 cellphone access has created things like anxiety, panic attacks, and helicopter parents. All nonexistent when I was growing up. Helicopter parent – Wikipedia
LikeLiked by 1 person
Top things that come to mind:
There were downsides too. Life could feel more lonely, especially if you were different and living in a small town.
Safety is another huge benefit of having a phone. I would never go out walking without my phone now.
LikeLiked by 3 people
That’s a good list. If I’d simplify the impact that phones have had on people’s lives, I’d say it’s that we’re living through a massive mental health crisis that is affecting pretty much everyone these days, caused by those devices. We’ve become ever more narcissistic, self-obsessed and selfish, enabled by particularly smart phones.
I might just be having a bad day, but we talked here a day or 2 ago about how people are losing it ever more rapidly all over the place, are people seeing this in their personal lives, too? I see a couple of people close to me really just becoming quite random at times, with no effort or pretense even of attempting to be rational. I’d don’t say I’m unaffected, but of course it’s easier to diagnose others’ in(s)anity than one’s own 🙂
Simon
PS Rob Glad you liked JERM, I’ll have a listen to that podcast you’ve linked.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Monk’s list is excellent. Rather than repeat many of her items I’ll add a few that were missed:
Smart phones and the internet have made our brains lazy. We used to memorize phone numbers and addresses and birthdays.
University (and high schools?) have dumbed down their curriculums. Many graduates now have weak minds and you can see these people leading our countries today. Some of this is caused by there being no need to learn anything hard because the answer to everything is on your phone. Some is caused by everyone now being entitled to be above average. Some is caused by universities growing their “businesses” by becoming fun amusement parks rather than serious centers of learning and weeders of weak minds.
We have too much choice today. I remember LOVING 2 or 3 music albums and playing them over and over. Now we have infinite choice of mostly crap.
Too much choice and stimulation has overloaded our dopamine system. Extreme click bait and short TikTok clips are required to draw attention to anything. This has reduced thoughtful discourse on important issues.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It really bothers me that people I respect like Dr. Bret Weinstein, Dr. J.J. Couey, Whitney Webb, and others are fighting between themselves rather than uniting to fight the real enemies.
LikeLike
I remember Michael Dowd saying something along the lines of “Failure to understand overshoot will cause you to misdiagnose everything important”.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Good line Stellar but remember I banned that phrase in my fire essay😊:
LikeLike
Must watch if you want to take your understanding of vaccination problems to the next level.
I hope all of us here now understand the inherent risk of mRNA transfections: It causes cells throughout our body, including in vulnerable organs like the heart, to manufacture non-self proteins, and these cells are destroyed by the immune system, thus creating health problems.
Dr. J.J. Couey goes up a level and argues that intramuscular injection of any combination of substances intended to augment the immune system is a bad idea.
Our immune system is designed to protect the inside from the outside. Bypassing the barriers by injecting into a muscle breaks the system.
Recall that the concept of vaccination was discovered by scratching cowpox on the skin. As a child, I got about 5 vaccinations and I remember them being delivered as a red liquid in a sugar cube (through the gut barrier), and something being scratched into a patch on my arm (through the skin barrier).
Now we inject about 80 vaccines into the muscles of children and autism is up 25,000%.
This short video explains the problem.
If you want to go deeper, this Jerm Warfare podcast interview with Couey is superb. It’s the clearest and crispest articulation of the covid crimes by Couey I have found.
I’m getting closer to my goal of someday reconciling the covid stories of Dr. Bret Weinstein and Dr. J.J. Couey who currently disagree on what happened, despite both being brilliant men with deep domain knowledge and high integrity.
LikeLike
Given what we have have done to our siblings of the biosphere, to each other for merely some quick dopamine and hedonistic high collapse can’t come soon enough.
For some reason I am not able to embed videos only post links.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I fixed your videos. WordPress made some changes to the commenting system a few days ago and I’m also struggling. Hopefully they will fix it soon.
I can’t watch that orangutang video, nor videos about the slaughter of elephants. It’s too upsetting for my brain.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Same, very deeply disturbing.
LikeLike
Couple of thoughts popped up in my head after watching the videos:
1. We fuck each other over all the time, without even realizing it. We fuck every living thing on this planet over and think it’ll be fine because we use paper straws and order the free-range chicken. And the sick thing is, I think deep down we know we’re not fooling anyone. I think we know we’re living a lie. An agreed-upon mass delusion to help us deny and keep denying how awful we really are.
2. Being stuck at the first destination (civilization needs to go) puts you in the same camp with the ignorant masses who don’t even waste one minute of their lives with this doomerism. Both camps will be in agreement that the most important issue at hand is for the human race to make it through the upcoming bottleneck and continue on in the history books. Boy, that’s a lot of hard time served in the doomasphere just to end up on the same page as 8 billion clueless fucking morons. I wouldn’t trust it just for that reason alone.
LikeLike
Trust what?
LikeLike
That continuing the human race is the correct side to be on.
Feels the same as when the masses couldn’t accept that earth was not the center of the universe or galaxy. Or that all planets and the sun do not revolve around earth. Or any of the other numerous times where we can’t accept anything that portrays humans as not being god’s gift to the universe.
ps. I only used part of the quote for my 2nd thought. Maybe it makes more sense if I include the whole thing (at the end of this comment):
https://un-denial.com/2024/12/29/by-charles-chris-doomers-anonymous/comment-page-1/#comment-108555
LikeLiked by 1 person
An old classic comedy skit.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Much harder now for the deep state to initiate another plandemic and to push transfections.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s some fun facts I looked up.
Apollo space program cost in today’s dollars was about $150 billion spent over 13 years.
Stargate AI project cost announced this week is $500 billion spent over 4 years.
The annual spend rate of Stargate is 10 times that of Apollo.
WTF?
We should pay attention to Stargate.
LikeLike
HHH: “Rock, meet hard place.”
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-january-2025/#comment-785181
LikeLiked by 3 people
Today Trump demanded OPEC increase oil production, so oil prices go down, so inflation goes down, so interest rates go down, so government deficits can increase, so economic growth can continue, so we don’t crash into a depression.
Sounds like a brilliant plan. When you need more of something, just demand it. Why didn’t someone else think of that?
LikeLiked by 3 people
Might as well go out with a bang.
They’re sure as shit not doing this to cure cancer.
https://x.com/i/grok/share/j6blXSx7BabD29v3MmZlonQOT
LikeLike
So that is why the Tech oligarchs support him.
LikeLiked by 1 person
more ramblings from a madman:
I made that statement back in September. IMO, it’s aging like fine wine. The reason I’m thinking about it is because I’ve seen the word popping up too much lately. For any of you writers that lurk here… get that goddamn word out of your vocab. Unless you’re using it to describe harsh weather/starvation/cannibalism. If your confused, read this post of mine from back in April (worth reading just to see me trying too hard with the fear mongering😊). https://un-denial.com/2024/04/09/radical-reality-by-hideaway-and-radical-acceptance-by-b/comment-page-1/#comment-95309
Have also seen this sentiment popping up, regarding sustainability: It’s worthwhile to look more closely at native american cultures pre columbus.
No, it’s not worthwhile. All it does is trick you into thinking that humans used to willfully live in right relationship to reality and that we can get back there again. In other words, it lures you away from the MPP.
Yes, everything about native american culture was good compared to the evil European culture. But that’s only because they were a couple thousand years behind the Eurotrash in the energy/complexity department (domestication, mining, extraction, exploitation, etc). New World would have gotten there eventually, guaranteed by the MPP.
If the New World had been inaccessible to the Old World for another thousand years… it would have been the native americans (because of the much more plentiful resource rich Americas) eventually washing up on the shores of the Old World in their fancy ships & superior weapons and then conquering any primitive cultures that still remained on the barren wastelands of Europe/Asia/Africa/Aus. The old world would have coined a wetiko type word for these greedy monsters from the new world.
Old World meeting New World could possibly be one of the rarest things in the universe. It’s the closest thing to time travel that a planet can witness. And if other planets have had this type of meeting, we already know exactly how it turned out. MPP at its finest… so please, let’s retire the word wetiko. Because the only thing that word is good for is ammo for the White Skin Derangement Syndrome crowd to try and agitate white people.
And speaking of my WSDS, one last thing because I just can’t help myself. From the MPP’s perspective, during this brief 75 year run of humanity’s Peak, the most vital trait is to be born an Empire Baby. Next key factors are to be a straight white male. An infinite amount of crazy shit went into dictating that these demographic traits would end up being the advantageous ones. But the craziest thing for me will always be that in the 200k – 300k year history of Sapiens, this particular pigmentation does not show up until 7,000 years ago. Just in the nick of time to become the architects, rulers, and benefactors of the most unequal Peak in the universe.
LikeLike
LOL. I ran into wetiko yesterday. Couldn’t remember what it meant so I asked Grok to explain it to me. Still couldn’t understand it. So I’m more than happy to ignore it from now on. Anything designed to be obtuse should be ignored, like philosophers.
LikeLike
Hey now! That’s a 15-yard penalty. Unsportsmanlike conduct for the low blow hit on philosophers😊.
LikeLike
I didn’t know you are a philosopher. Sorry if I offended. You can call me a Polak. We’re pretty low on the pecking order.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is this wetiko not?
LikeLike
Thanks, you gave me something to do on a friday night. I’m such a party animal😊.
Yes, I’m betting this whole scene qualifies as Wetiko in the original sense of the word. The signs are all there; harsh weather, starvation, cannibalism.
Per wikipedia:
Golly, I can’t wait to go back to living in right relationship with nature like these noble wisemen😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tough crowd. At least Rob engaged with me… but c’mon people! This was a good rant. Should have ten “likes” by now. Or at the very least, some hate replies telling me how full of shit I am… anything but the dreaded silent treatment😒
LikeLiked by 1 person
Are you familiar with the Kurgan Hypothesis? It is freaking crazy. Basically this one culture took over all of Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cool link monk. Very interesting. Coincidentally, I think I just heard some of this stuff in an interview last night with someone named David Reich. You might like it. I’m gonna make a new post about it right now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hideaway:
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-january-2025/#comment-785242
LikeLiked by 4 people
Hideaway has helped make all of this stuff completely obvious for me… so it’s very easy for me to assume that Brandon is a paid shill for his refusal to “get it”. But I’m sure my logic is incorrect. More likely that I am once again severely underestimating the power of denial.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s definitely denial by Brandon, he wont bother studying anything I suggest in detail, but has a brief look at something like size complexity power laws, then dismisses it before he has a chance to understand it. Likewise fir the EROEI of renewables with back-up, he wont do his own research into it, just believes what’s written.
Perhaps the gene humans have, to co-operate and get along with others through a long life, is a gene that makes us ‘believe’ others stories, to help us co-operate with a different animal of the same species.
Think about it, back 100,000 years ago, if the leader and everyone else went left, but you individually thought there was more food going right at the fork in the road, those that ‘believed’ the leader and went left were a group and had higher survival probabilities, while the individual that went right would be more exposed to a predator than the group.
Also think of other animal groups, a flock of birds or a school of fish that all believe one bird or fish that suddenly terns in a new direction and all follow, as there is safety in numbers, whereas the individual that went it’s own way was predator food…
Rob, thoughts??
LikeLiked by 1 person
It seems you are providing more leadership than any other individual at POB so if Brandon’s behavior is explained by an evolved tendency to follow the leader, then he should be following you.
No, I think his brain is unable to accept your story because it is unpleasant. Evidence and logic have no effect. It’s a side effect of why we’re the only species with an extended theory of mind, and the only species that believes in gods.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For some reason your comment made me think of Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael. Not sure if anyone has ever seen this very rare missing page from his book:
Narrator: And why are we the only ones with eToM and a belief in gods?
Gorilla: Because you humans are the only ones plugged into the nightmare of full consciousness.
Narrator: Why are we the only ones plugged in?
Gorilla: Because your homo genus ancestors started playing around with fire a million years ago.
Narrator: Ok, but what’s that got to do with it?
Gorilla: Over time, the advantages/benefits gained by using fire eventually leads to the brain being capable of receiving full consciousness.
Narrator: Is fire the only way possible for this “plugged in” event to happen?
Gorilla: Yes.
Narrator: Ah, I’m beginning to understand why humans stand out from every other lifeform. Do you have any more words of wisdom for me Ishmael?
Gorilla: Yes, I’m glad you asked. This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please.
LikeLike
Very good. Thanks for the reminder.
It took me a while to internalize and incorporate Hideaway’s mineral depletion story into my overshoot story. I expect I’ll soon start to talk about fire as a necessary precursor to evolving a brain powerful enough to make the leap into an extended theory of mind with a fortuitous mutation for denial of mortality a million years later.
LikeLike
Thanks! That’s music to my ears. For all the knowledge & influence your site has given me, it’s just nice to know that I was able to give back a little.
I didn’t become 100% confident about this fire bullshit until I got this ringing endorsement from King Hideaway. I was officially knighted that day.😊
https://un-denial.com/2024/09/14/by-kira-hideaway-on-relocalization/comment-page-4/#comment-107515
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rintrah reviews new evidence that transfected children have 1000 times more spike antibodies than un-transfected children, 8 months after the transfection, with no sign that the difference reduces over time.
Immune system resources are finite. What are the implications of allocating more immune system resources than are needed to one threat?
https://www.rintrah.nl/persistent-abnormal-antibody-concentrations-in-children/
LikeLike
I think that this will be a 10 year event. Peoples immune systems are going to get worn out by constant onslaught of respiratory viruses. I hope that the unvaxxed can rely on not being immunologically fixated and viral disruptors like quercetin and ivermectin will help the vaxxed and unvaxxed too.
LikeLiked by 2 people
What do you mean by 10 year event?
LikeLike
I think it will take ten years to see the full effects of the vaccines and covid bioweapon on the health of the populations of this planet. Effects that are undeniable, such as mass immune system crashes. effectively a new form of AIDS.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks. It’s making me crazy trying to understand why my government is still transfecting children today.
It’s murder or assault with the intent to harm unless they’re all hiding some secret threat they know will soon emerge and kill everyone that is not transfected.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
That’s courageous of you Rob. You are right. Going at the root.
While we are at it, I think we should also forbid the production of smartphones (any screen for that matter). Screens are to the mind and psyche what industrial food is to the body.
I know, it’s non consistent of me to be saying that while in front of a screen. I guess it’s the ones who abused it most, who understand the dangers best.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Nate Hagens is using craniosacral therapy to remain sane with his defective denial genes. A side effect seems to be that it clouds the ability to understand what should be done in response to severe overshoot, and steers the mind to foggy woo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniosacral_therapy
LikeLiked by 2 people
Another potential reason: the Youtube algorithm probably doesn’t like calls for population reduction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wonder how the mental health effects of overshoot awareness compare to TDS?
LikeLike
There’s a LOT of hilarious trolling happening in the US this week. Heads must be exploding.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I am so looking forward to the post Trump world. Maybe people will regain some sanity LOL
LikeLike
The New York times, like most mainstream media, has a growthist agenda
https://overpopulation-project.com/america-needs-more-people/
LikeLiked by 3 people
KPMGs head of global agribusiness posted on LinkedIn the other day this..
“.. to maintain the standard of living we expect we urgently need to rethink what the optimal population size is for New Zealand’s future. Let me be clear, this is not debating whether we should have net immigration at fifty or a hundred thousand a year. This is about whether we need 20 or 25 million people living here by 2040 and being clear on the skills we need these people to bring to the country.”
We currently have around 5 million.
I commented about the irony of KPMG staff promoting growth given the Limits to Growth review that Gaya Herrington published while working at KPMG. No response of course.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Steve Bull today released part 2 of a very good 3 part series on why renewables are not helping our overshoot predicament.
https://olduvai.ca/?p=69060
https://olduvai.ca/?p=69072
LikeLiked by 3 people
Today’s essay by Tim Watkins titled “Clueless” exposes and confirms just how stupid some of our leaders are today.
In this case, it’s the UK’s plan to save their economy with AI.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/01/25/clueless/
LikeLiked by 3 people
Rob, did you read this one as well? There is a nice callout to un-denial at the end of the essay 🙂
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/01/21/basket-loads-of-hubris/
LikeLike
Thanks!
el mar above also pointed out Watkin’s mention of Varki’s MORT.
It’s quite rare and very nice to see.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Praise the lord! There’s nothing better than finally finding something you’ve been searching forever. Years ago, I heard this music in an old war movie and its haunted me ever since. Found it last night from a comment on a nihilism yt channel that I regularly visit. God bless those creepy guys. LOL
IMO, it’s the perfect collapse music. Thought I’d share just in case anyone else has spent years looking for this song😊.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I had to check the comments but was it Platoon? I instantly recognised it and felt the feeling I had when watching the movie even though I couldn’t quite remember the movie name.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Correct Campbell. And based on the wiki page, it’s very famous and has been used in tons of media. Was 1st performed in 1938.
Dont know how I never connected the dots with Platoon. I see that it’s even been used in a Seinfeld episode… for sure I should have noticed that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A great movie. However quite ambiguous, as it strongly, for me at least, eroticizes war.
If you are interested, 1992 saw two magnificent movies in relation to the french war in Vietnam:
I will let you guess which one of the two I prefer.
LikeLike
Same year, another atmosphere, the korean perspective: White Badge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMHtY5FgAj8)
And the link between war and economy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_in_the_Vietnam_War#Impact_within_South_Korea
LikeLiked by 1 person
A new rip of the 1968 documentary “In the Year of the Pig” was released a couple days ago by MVGroup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Year_of_the_Pig
LikeLike
This is my new all time favorite covid discussion.
I missed it when it was published in October 2024.
It’s deep and wide covering most dimensions of the crimes (although it does not cover the excess oxygen + ventilator murders).
I learned a lot I was not aware of including how their bioweapons countermeasure has actually made us more vulnerable to bioweapons. It’s one more thing to add to the long list of things they got exactly opposite of correct.
LikeLike
Sure looks to me like B is reading Hideaway.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/when-renewables-meet-their-limits
LikeLiked by 3 people
There’s a new paper doing the rounds in the degrowth world.
Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542519624003103
Authors include Kate Raworth, Jason Hickel and Tim Jackson. There’s some good discussion but nothing about MPP or Hideaways complexity issues and the overriding thought I had while reading was how can so many big brains live with such hope in the face of everything pointing to collapse. Obviously denial as well as income protection and social status was what came up.
Here’s the summary..
“There are increasing concerns that continued economic growth in high-income countries might not be environmentally sustainable, socially beneficial, or economically achievable. In this Review, we explore the rapidly advancing field of post-growth research, which has evolved in response to these concerns. The central idea of post-growth is to replace the goal of increasing GDP with the goal of improving human wellbeing within planetary boundaries. Key advances discussed in this Review include: the development of ecological macroeconomic models that test policies for managing without growth; understanding and reducing the growth dependencies that tie social welfare to increasing GDP in the current economy; and characterising the policies and provisioning systems that would allow resource use to be reduced while improving human wellbeing. Despite recent advances in post-growth research, important questions remain, such as the politics of transition, and transformations in the relationship between the Global North and the Global South.”
And last sentence..
” Bringing disciplines together, developing new trans-disciplinary concepts, and integrating empirical studies with theoretical frameworks and models could provide valuable insights into how societies can achieve high wellbeing without economic growth, and within planetary boundaries.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
blah, blah, blah
Raworth is I think the originator of the popular circular economy idea. A green friend pointed me to her. I had to explain that Raworth ideas are completely devoid of any bio-physical reality. My friend chose not to understand. Denial is amazing.
LikeLiked by 3 people
She’s Doughnut Economics and has been interviewed by Nate Hagens. Circular Economy person is Ellen MacArthur. I agree about the blah blah. I call it a word salad.
When I was still in my techno-optimism phase working in corporate sustainability I spent hundreds of hours researching ‘best practice’, writing sustainability reports, sustainability strategies and presentations. I look back now and think what a waste of fucking time. I wish I’d quit sooner and done a practical trade. I’m playing catch up with practical skills these days but enjoying it more than any day spent in the corporate office.
LikeLiked by 2 people
LOL, I love your hatred of the corporate world. After that Lars Larsen book review from Rob with diesel running out in 2027… I announced I was gonna quit my job. Most people’s reaction was “calm down Chris, probably a mistake to do that”… but your reaction was “hell yes, quit right now”. LOL
I’m ashamed to admit to you that I’m still working there. Not for long though. My company has mandated a return to the office initiative. No more working from home allowed. I knew it was coming soon. I have not stepped foot in the office for almost 5 years. I have called their bluff every step of the way about returning to the office. But they’re cranking up the heat now and I can tell my days are numbered… Looking forward to it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Exciting times ahead Chris.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Campbell I am literally working on this question for work:
How are you reducing emissions and ensuring that economic and social development can be implemented on a sustainable basis including protection and preservation of the environment, reducing waste, carbon emissions and pollution.
We are investing in miracles, that’s how… LOLz
I love poorly written, nonsensical questions. By the way, this is the edited version of the question
LikeLiked by 3 people
The classic all in one, and the only, sustainability question.
Wouldn’t it be brilliant if someone submitted that “we can’t and don’t let any of our competitors bullshit you that they can.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
I think there might also be something wrong with people who only work at universities, NGOs, and non-essential government agencies. Something to do with being a further step away from reality or the nature of their work?? They become quite obsessed with models and frameworks, and desire grand theories and narratives.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Rob it’s simple physics they don’t understand.
Economists certainly do love word salads. Put a lot of big words together in sentences that include…..
contemporary societies
foundational scientific
emerging research
sustainability science
encompassing research
egalitarian slowdown
democratic transformation
qualitative improvement
selectively decreasing
In the conclusion they should state “as we can’t dazzle you with brilliance we are trying to baffle you with bullshit”……
The limits to growth authors were not correct in their modelling. They didn’t account for increased size/scale necessary for the increased complexity, they just lumped it altogether as ‘technology increase’, nor did they consider the increasing energy required to obtain declining grades of energy, material and food resources, nor entropy and dissipation (the sustainable world scenario).
Every economist, or for that matter renewable or nuclear advocate, does likewise in ignoring the physical reality of size/complexity required for gaining materials, energy and food, all while entropy and dissipation continue unabated.
We have to continue to increase complexity to obtain the minerals, energy and food for civilization, from lower grades of everything, plus maintain food yields from limited land, given soil erosion/nutrient depletion.
We can’t advance complexity unless we grow, as the increased complexity and growth frees up resources to advance complexity (read efficiency for complexity).
If/when, we reduce any of the following; growth, size/scale, energy, materials or food, we start to lose complexity which has made every aspect of modernity more efficient, while at the same time allowing the gathering of resources from more remote locations, (which is a less efficient aspect), however, overall the total system of civilization is more efficient.
There is no going backwards, nor standing still, as entropy and dissipation never cease. Civilization grows until it can’t grow any more, which then leads to eventual collapse as all the efficiency gains from complexity break down in chaotic ways. All prior civilizations collapsed, but none were as large and complex as the modern world.
There is plenty of scientific evidence that the larger more complex systems all collapse much faster than simple small complex systems, as a small, simple system has not gained much efficiency from their low levels of complexity.
Every system that has ever existed or currently exists, goes through the process of development, growth, stagnation and collapse, whether it’s a star, storm, ecosystem, lifeform, ant colony or civilization. The stagnation and collapse parts are always longer for the simplest systems, while the truely gigantic ones stagnate and collapse in spectacular fashion, like a supernova for the largest of stars.
There is no reason to believe the largest system of civilization that has ever existed, by orders of magnitude, will not behave like all the other gigantic systems at the end of their lives as it appears to be a physical rules of systems.
LikeLiked by 6 people
@Hideaway
What is your opinion on the Olduvai Theory?
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=f9171f0ebc345c1d7fd9fd8caafc1b8fa7999922
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like how Olduvai Theory works on “energy”, but it has the usual problem of concentrating on one element, energy, instead of a combination of factors that is our situation/civilization. This is probably why they predicted dates, that have been proven to be wrong over the last 20 years, just like every other peak oil, or peak energy, or peak civilization prediction.
Of course having a theory with dates of when ‘decline’ or whatever happens, then it doesn’t, gets the theory dismissed by everyone mainstream.
Their problem is (that paper anyway), doesn’t go into why the growth rates of energy have declined and will decline, it just uses past data. I know there is more to the theory as I read Richard Duncan’s theory/book whatever nearly 20 years ago and can’t remember it all, but like just about everyone in the future prediction business, misses how the technology/complexity/efficiency has come from growth in energy and population (market size) growth.
I suspect there will be more dates of prediction of collapse over the next couple of years, that will be incorrect, as we wont clearly know when energy in particular is in true decline until we get years of increasing production decline in oil, financial markets respond to the inflation, recession/depression hits, but oil production doesn’t increase because feedback loops set in to increase the decline rate.
The Walter Youngquist quote is a beauty, but of course doesn’t have the accompanying reasoning, but his book mostly did, but again with the exception of where and how our technological complexity has come from ….
” There is no comprehensive substitute for oil in its high-energy density, ease of handling, myriad end-uses, and in the volumes in which we now use it. The peak of world oil production and then its irreversible decline will be a turning point in Earth history with worldwide impact beyond anything previously seen. And that event will surely occur within the lifetimes of most people living today. (Youngquist, 2004)”
LikeLiked by 4 people
Degrowth isn’t perfect, but most other political movements aren’t even trying to be consistent with the laws of physics and ecology.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I get that. They’re all well intentioned caring people. But I follow the DegrowthNZ group and you can’t even get a few hundred people in that group to understand overshoot and agree a common path let alone 8 billion+.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I left that group because they seemed more interested complaining about [evil capitalist] companies than talking about how we would actually degrow. One woman on there liked to call everyone racist names when they disagreed with her. Astounding stuff
LikeLiked by 1 person
They still don’t talk about how to degrow and climate change still dominates. There are a lot of posts unrelated to degrowth like lots of stuff recently about the treaty principles bill. I only check in periodically and occasionally post something challenging about how I can’t see how a planned degrowth won’t cause the collapse they’re trying to avoid.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Campbell, “you can’t even get a few hundred people in that group to understand overshoot”, that’s before discussing outcomes, but everyone in every environmental group I’ve ever been involved with wants and expects solutions, plus fully believes in human exceptionalism…
I’m sure I’ve told the story about when I went to a local climate discussion group a few months ago, with the guest speaker going on about eVs, solar panels, smart houses, etc, until I couldn’t help myself and explained how none of it was ‘green’ and all the fossil fuels used to make it all, especially the new Aluminium smelters based on coal in Indonesia etc.
After the meeting/discussion one of the leaders of the group, who knew I was correct, asked the usual question… What’s the solution then?? I replied that there wasn’t one, it’s a predicament, not a problem that can be solved, without going into the whole detail of why…… Since then, the group have gone on their merry way of promoting green solutions that rely upon using coal, oil and gas, “over there” (China, Indonesia, India, etc), so we can look green and virtuous…
A new mine/mines?? No, no, no!! they are against that, apparently all the new green technologies grow on trees, despite their metal content..
LikeLiked by 3 people
I have a friend who has run the Sustainable Business Network for more than 20 years. She’s very high profile and even has a government award for meritorious service in the field. She told me recently that she’s waiting for technological solutions like solar panels from mushrooms. Not quite a tree but can be grown.
WASF.
LikeLiked by 2 people
She suffers from mushroom treatment… kept in the dark and fed bullshit…
LikeLiked by 3 people
Nice one. I’m too slow. The moment has passed. 🙏
LikeLike
You could reply “I’m not waiting for a miracle but instead trying to cause one by using my species’ unique intelligence and belief in god to pray that the laws of thermodynamics are overturned.”
LikeLiked by 4 people
I like that. Very good.
LikeLike
Ha!! Hilarious. I immediately thought of Alice in Wonderland.
Forget about “video killed the radio star”… media killed the human mind
LikeLiked by 2 people
Never heard of this guy, but I made it through the whole interview no problem. David is very easy to listen to. No aggressive salesman vibes at all. The annoying host is the only problem (“OMG, it’s all so fascinating” and “OMG it’s so interesting” are the only things the host knows how to say). And yes, David has no answers to life’s big questions, but he made me think about a lot of shit… which is my favorite quality for a longform interview.
And I like his two-minute breakdown of shared knowledge at the 31:45 mark. A while back I referenced the movie Quest for Fire (1981) which is set 80kya and shows how some tribes have fire and some don’t. Monk couldn’t accept this. Her logic makes perfect sense; the use of fire is over a million years old so by 80kya it’s laughable to think that some people had not conquered it yet… She even made me doubt the movies accuracy. But I’m starting to think this logic is incorrect.
David also got me thinking about that 200kya event when we lucky Sapiens were plugged into the nightmare of full consciousness. (I could just say MORT/eToM, but my way sounds scarier😊). And evolution wiping her hands clean from us at that point… officially putting humans off the grid. And how this 200kya event was the one and only time in the history of our solar system, guaranteed. Ditto for the entire Milky Way (possibly).
That got me laughing about how insanely big the universe is and how ultra-rare full consciousness is… and then I remembered a recent article from another collapse site talking about how humans are failing in our role of designated stewards of the planet… and that got me laughing hysterically to the point of delirium… stewards of the planet?? WTF are you talking about? GTFO with that garbage! Honestly, I’d rather read about god and the afterlife. Or about green energy transitions. Or living in right relationship to nature. Or how we need an awakening of consciousness… Anything but that asinine stewards of the planet nonsense… As you can see, I have a really bad case of Stewardship Derangement Syndrome😊.
But anyways, I highly recommend this interview. Hopefully I’m not endorsing some kook.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I’m about half way through this and enjoying it however find it very strange they have not yet discussed that god emerged simultaneous with that small group that took over the planet.
LikeLike
Ya, that was disappointing. (I think I remember David going there for a brief minute though, but definitely not enough)
I also wish there had been more discussion about burials, mourning the dead, etc.
LikeLike
Usually I listen to these podcasts at 1.5 to 1.75 speed while I do work around the property (pruning trees right now). This time I had to slow down to 1.25 because Dr. Reich speaks fast and it’s full of interesting history. I also ordered his book even though it is 7 years old. I am surprised by the fact that I have not heard of this research at all. It is very fascinating. I particularly found interesting his claim that all non indigenous African groups (meaning all the rest of the world) have 10 – 20% Neanderthal DNA.
Sure he didn’t mention God and nothing about our current crises. Kinda like Nick Lane (siloed interesting science).
AJ
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good to hear AJ. I was contemplating getting his book. You’ll have to give us a book report when you get done with it.
LikeLike
Hi there Chris,
Hope you and your family are going well, and best of luck with new doors opening for you as others close (very much more satisfying if you slam them shut yourself!) So good to check in and see you’re as tenacious as ever with your Fire walk and talk, go bro!
Just thought I’d throw this stray thought in here before it leaves my addled brain. Right now I’m in tropical rainforest country and we’re in the middle of a severe low pressure system bringing torrential rain in some areas, last night we probably had 70-80mm and much more predicted for the rest of the week (and even possibly a cyclone forming). It occurred to me just how difficult it would be to make a fire or keep one going consistently in such climates where extended periods of damp were the norm. I can appreciate that small cooking fires would be possible by keeping smaller stores of dry wood but building a sizeable fire hot enough and for long enough to eventually evolve into pottery making and metal work would take some organisation, which may or may not have been generated by different tribes, just based on their terrain and clime as well as need for adjunct warmth or not. In addition, the rainfall climatology and fuel source of even a relatively small geographical area can be wildly varying, depending on topography. So this is a possible contribution to explaining why and how some tribes developed more sophisticated fire skills than others, and perhaps the survival benefit of this allowed them to dominate and eventually assimilate neighbouring groups (and even becoming the dominant culture of a whole continent and allowing them to sail to new ones and wiping out their populations by guns, germs, and steel).
The conquest of Fire was the turning point, but whoever mastered it fastest and had the resources to escalate its usage became the dominant subspecies. It seems there’s no difference to this modus operandi today, look at the mad race to superiority through nuclear power and now super AI.
I know all of us here hold a certain indescribable incredulity that we are actually alive and conscious Right Here Right Now (I just have that Jesus Jones song running through my head, and the lyrics are pretty apt!)
Go well everyone, hey, we almost got through the first month of 2025 without mushroom clouds in our coffee! (apologies for all the mixed-up allusions, but it proves that I do lurk here even if I’m silent for a long while!)
Namaste friends.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Gaia. Great to hear from you! I was gonna give you the cold shoulder for a while to pay you back for your abandonment😊. But I can’t bring myself to do that to my lil sis. Besides, all you have to do to win me back is talk about fire. Which you have done very eloquently here. I really like your stray thought. And it got me thinking.
This was from my essay:
I was definitely wrong here. There is zero chance that they’re equally rare… MORT theory (aka: full consciousness) is much, much rarer. Conquering fire is the easy part of the equation. Not going extinct for a million plus years so that the benefits of fire can eventually lead to full consciousness… that’s the hard part… with the added bonus of making sure you don’t lose the fire knowledge along the way. And perhaps it doesn’t have to be a million-year process. Like if your exceptional with the mastering of fire, and you get extremely lucky with the climate factor, maybe you can get there in a couple hundred thousand years… the perfect run😊.
With some of the stories I’ve heard, it seems humans defied all odds by surviving long enough to be plugged into full consciousness. I’m probably exaggerating here, but I get the sense that we were down to under 10k population many different times in history.
And what were human brains capable of prior to full consciousness? I don’t know, but I think I’ve been giving em way too much credit. I imagine sharing knowledge about how to hunt, cook, fish, give birth, etc… and then passing that knowledge down to the next generation and so on… So their lifestyle at year 600k looks much more advanced then at year 200k. But I’m missing something here. Surely there’s tons of knowledge being passed down, but not in the rosy progressive way I’m picturing. More of a wild animal type where their lifestyle looks pretty much similar at any point during those million years prior to full consciousness.
So ya, I can imagine millions/billions of planets that have some type of fire apes, but not with full consciousness. The odds are too stacked against it. But I can also see a clear agenda developing from me… I really want to think that Earth is one of the few planets (maybe only) that has ever witnessed a single species self-induced mass extinction😊.
LikeLike
I like that song, but the one from Fatboy Slim seems apropos for the current situation!
LikeLike
Elon the Hopegoat
https://zeroinputagriculture.substack.com/p/elon-the-hopegoat?r=f45kp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
LikeLiked by 1 person
In case you have not encountered Rene Girard, his ideas on the importance of a scapegoat in our culture are very interesting.
I recommend and have listened to this 2001 5 part CBC Ideas series several times.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nobody does a better job of reminding us how stupid/evil/unethical our leaders and news media are than Matt Orfalea.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love these types of clips. Especially when they play everyone repeating the same mantra simultaneously… LOL, it’s like The Stepford Wives or something.
But I’m afraid this might distract us from being the designated stewards of the planet🤭
LikeLiked by 1 person
A year ago the brainwash symphony was Ukraine is winning. Kind of quiet today.
LikeLike
The CIA believes COVID most likely originated from a lab but has low confidence in its own finding
https://apnews.com/article/covid-cia-trump-china-pandemic-lab-leak-9ab7e84c626fed68ca13c8d2e453dde1
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLiked by 2 people
“The situation in the Permian Basin is worse than it seems (compared to EIA estimates).
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/01/la-situacion-de-la-cuenca-permica-es.html
Yes, we are on the edge of the precipice, which, together with the
decline of the rest of the world , puts us at 2027 as the starting point for the decline of the oil production plateau (especially due to the almost total absence of new discoveries). There is no doubt that if oil demand remains strong until 2030, this decline would be a burden on global economic growth, so we expect an acceleration in the drilling of new wells, even if their productivity is lower. For this to happen, two possibilities need to come true. Either oil prices rise significantly or the Trump administration will be forced to massively subsidize American drilling.”
Saludos
el mar
LikeLiked by 1 person
Comment from quark
January 26, 2025, 17:13
There are still plenty of reserves of oil, gas, coal and natural gas liquids. So if instead of letting the decline be natural, they choose to accelerate extraction, they can certainly do so. So talking about 2027-2030-2033 will depend on what our leaders decide.
But it should be obvious that we are in a kind of low-intensity World War III and instead of ending conflicts, they are multiplying. The “pacifist” Trump has just arrived and his first statements talk about taking ownership of Greenland, the Panama Canal and annexing Canada.
The world is moving, everyone is taking positions and we are heading straight to the fight for resources and control of maritime routes, as we have already seen with the Suez Canal.
We are entering the final phase of a process that began decades ago and is called the zenith of Western civilization.
Greetings.
Saludos
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks.
Another aware person noticed the bizarre behavior of Art Berman.
They focus on the depletion of fracking sweet spots but did not discuss the dramatic drop in well productivity due to tighter spacing of wells which means reality could be worse than discussed here.
LikeLike
AI – race to the bottom
https://justdario.com/2025/01/the-real-era-of-ai-begins-the-one-of-the-ai-charlatans-ends/
Saludos
el mar
LikeLiked by 2 people
I had no idea about this insane level of investment.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rintrah shifted from mRNA transfection sins to aware overshoot philosophy today and he’s pretty good.
https://www.rintrah.nl/the-techno-utopian-myth/
The Chinese are beating us at fusion but it doesn’t matter because it won’t work and because peak tritium is a thing.
Indrajit Samarajiva today also wrote a good essay on how China is outcompeting us, by far.
https://indi.ca/how-communism-is-obviously-outcompeting-capitalism/
LikeLiked by 2 people
Coffee inflation retrenched a little in 2024 but has resumed in 2025.
Here’s a summary of my price tracking for the cheapest espresso beans I can buy here:
2021 $14.32/Kg
2022 $18.18/Kg
2023 $20.94/Kg
2024 $17.69/Kg
2025 $21.23/Kg
LikeLiked by 1 person
My community invested in a fleet of electric garbage trucks. They have been operating for about 6 months and are amazingly quiet.
Today was the first pickup day that was cold, about -2C, and they used a diesel truck.
https://electricautonomy.ca/fleets/2024-07-24/emterra-electric-trucks-mack-lr-bc/
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
This is very good. So many dodgy unexplained things have happened over the last few years it’s easy to forget the questions that still need answers. Taibbi discusses those questions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lots of questions to be answered. Maybe we will be lucky to get some although I am not extremely hopeful as there are powerful forces arrayed against disclosure and Trump is stupid and easily distracted. That is if he doesn’t stumble us into a war. My only consolation is that Putin, Xi and the Iranians seem to understand him and will attempt to play him to their (and our) advantage.
AJ
LikeLike
The endless growth ponzi scheme must go on!
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 1 person
GDP growth is achieved by grow your energy and your population. This is why I always find the troofers idea that the elites want to kill us all absolutely ridiculous. We are the source of their wealth
LikeLiked by 3 people
Got this Robert Hunziker article from Sam Mitchell. Robert is kind of pulling a Canadian Prepper scare tactic here. You know, the “I have a friend high up in the govt and you need to hear what he told me”. Except its more of a toned-down version because it’s just an email Robert got from one of his fans:
Nothing groundbreaking about the email. And you won’t find out who this mysterious important person is.
But it got me thinking more about what we talk about here sometimes… how more of the “higher up” people know about what’s going on than we think… and also how many of these people deal with this info by doing nothing but continuing their status quo careers. Like this guy… surely he didn’t just find out this info last month and now he’s writing Robert to help spread the word… No, he’s probably known for years and finally something happened in his life to get him to give a shit. Maybe he recently became a grandfather or something… but that’s black-and-white thinking.
Risks of Ecosystem Crash-Landings – CounterPunch.org
LikeLiked by 1 person
ChatGPT:
LikeLiked by 1 person
No shenanigans here (not sure if that’s what your implying). The email references Capt Haynes and Flight 232.
But the real problem is that I have a feeling you submit all things to AI to detect any fraud/plagiarism… I don’t like that. I’m not gonna be able to steal from people anymore.😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow. The ending is blunt
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry, maybe I misread your intro. I thought you said it was from a senior person at a high profile organization. I had a recollection of reading it somewhere else so I asked an AI to check.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks to monk for this.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Got into this mockumentary girl a couple weeks ago. I’m kind of tired of the Michael Scott “it’s cool to be dumb” type schtick. But she does make me laugh a quite a bit. Figured this audience might appreciate her style.
She has a new one called “Cunk on Life”, but I like 2022 “Cunk on Earth” way better. They’re all on Netflix.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for the tip, will check her out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Trump Plots ETHNIC CLEANSING Of Gaza – Israel’s Plan From The Start
LikeLike
Trump’s also threatening to crush Putin if he doesn’t make peace. Neither will happen.
Trump’s getting really bad information on military matters. Hamas has won. Russia will win.
Hopefully he’ll be getting good information soon from Tulsi Gabbard and will fire his advisors.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
I like this quote. It’s from a link that xraymike shared.
California wildfires and the media’s blindspot – The Tufts Daily
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s also true that simply being alive today is an implicit endorsement of fossil energy.
If you argue this is false, then you are also an implicit endorsement of Varki’s MORT.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Jeez, I think I’m having a senior moment right now because I’m not sure how to interpret what you said. At first I thought it was a dig at me.😊
Am I in the right ballpark; If you can’t see that civilization’s life & death revolves around accessible fossil fuels, it just means your MORT is working perfectly fine.
LikeLike
I thought you were pointing out the hypocrisy of institutions that argue we need to stop using fossil energy to fix climate change.
I was trying to point out that everyone arguing to stop fossil energy use is a hypocrite.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ahh, gotcha. Man, my idiocracy is getting worse every year😊.
Ya, I agree… kind of how Billy Bob breaks it down here:
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rob, we don’t have a choice..
None of us posting on this blog has any ability to go outside the system of civilization. None of us can shed all aspects of the modern world to live a life off the natural world. We would get jailed for running around naked, or spearing an animal that didn’t ‘belong’ to us, or living with a camp fire at the side of a creek or river.
Anywhere we try to live ‘naturally’, the land ‘belongs’ to someone and the rest of our species will hold up the right to imprison anyone that tries to violate the ‘right’ of the collective, too set rules.
If the land ‘belongs’ to us, we have to pay taxes for the ownership and to get money to pay taxes, means we are part of the system that endorses fossil fuels. If we ‘rent’ land, we need money to pay the rent, again part of the system..
‘Belongs’, ‘money’, ‘rent’ and ‘right’ are all just human terms having meaning to only humans, they are irrelevant concepts to the rest of life…
The very same fossil fuels that will soon be leaving us, have given us the most extravagant type of lifestyle that has ever existed on this planet, or ever likely to, for over a billion of us, with a decent proportion of the rest also having much better lifestyle than imagined by anyone 500 years ago..
None of us have any power to change the direction we are headed, so best to just enjoy modernity while it lasts, but also not feel guilty about it, as there never was anything we could do to change any of it…
LikeLiked by 3 people
I agree. I guess I wasn’t clear. That’s what I was trying to say.
None of us at un-Denial are arguing we should get rid of fossil energy because we know we can’t.
LikeLiked by 3 people
respected publications … LMFAO
LikeLike
Good catch! Alright, you and Rob have changed my mind… this is a terrible fucking quote😊.
It appeals to me only because I think we can remove the fossil fuel industry and substitute it with any other major industry and the quote still applies.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good point!!
I thought it was ROFLMFAO??
LikeLiked by 1 person
Chris Martenson stuck his neck out today and said DeepSeek popped the mother of all bubbles.
Now we get to see if deflation causes a drop in oil supply, or vice versa as Hideaway thinks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
An absolutely hilarious comment by a real Climate Strategist – whatever that is – on LinkedIn:
“I often use Jevon’s paradox to explain Fermi’s paradox and to overcome that we have to make a jump at the Kardashev scale. While I abhor an out of control Musk, this has been the reason why he was pushing us to go to Mars. We will either find more ways to harness energy or we are toast. Mind you, with fusion and geothermal, we still have leeway and with the plan to have AI servers operating from space where cooling and solar energy is plenty to beam the data to Earth, I don’t think collapse is unavoidable from an energy perspective. Wind and ground based solar are small solutions compared to what is needed, and will become niche applications. But lack of energy does not have to finish us. Killing the biosphere is our gravest error, which we must reverse.”
LikeLiked by 3 people
“…I also think every child is entitled to a free pony, because no child can be happy without a pony.”
LikeLiked by 4 people
That’s just the reason for all my current angst, Rob! You have just saved me thousands of dollars of needless therapy. I always wanted a pony when I was a child, even though we lived on a suburban block I still thought it was possible if we just fenced off a corner of it and put up a stable, the pony was going to live on my love alone, practicalities be damned! Having that denied obviously set me on the course of discontent with how things have to be and now I have to find a way to live the rest of my life knowing just how doomed we are. All because I didn’t get a pony when I wanted it. See how much damage all these parents are causing!
All kidding aside, I am 100% in alignment with Hideaway’s lament. The best those of us who are fully conscious of our predicament can do now is just finish out our lives with as much awareness and wonder that we can. This knowing of our doom doesn’t preclude having a sense of meaning or ability to sow and reap beauty and joy, rather I think crystalises it into a guiding compass for how to live each of our days. There is always room for more gratitude and kindness, may that fount in us never run dry, come what may.
Namaste, friends.
LikeLiked by 4 people
“ I don’t think“
Shortening the quote, to a bit of what’s in the third last line explains the authors real understanding….
I think I’ll use Rob’s “implicit endorsement of fossil energy” from upthread, to everyone that comes up with fairytales about the future, unless they can describe how any of it’s possible without fossil fuels, from today, including details. All of which is impossible of course…
LikeLiked by 4 people
RFK Jr’s cousin, Caroline Kennedy, alleges that he had his children vaccinated.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/28/caroline-kennedy-sends-letter-to-us-senator-describing-rfk-jr-as-predator
She also claims he has had problems with substance abuse as well. (But given the trauma in the family’s history, this is understandable).
We may find out more during his confirmation hearing. If simply denies those allegations, they are likely false. But, if he tries to avoid answering those questions, then they are probably true.
LikeLike
RFK Jr.’s substance abuse problem when he was younger is public knowledge. He has written and talked about it. (I think) he’s been clean for a long time.
Many people believed vaccines were generally good, and had their children vaccinated, until they discovered the depth of the lies during covid.
One of the biggest lies was they pretended an mRNA transfection is a “vaccine”.
Many people don’t believe a word they say about anything now.
RFK Jr. will restore science and trust to the system. Assuming unethical partisan rats like his cousin don’t block his appointment.
LikeLiked by 1 person
He openly says he has had his kids vaccinated. He said it during the current hearing. His opponents are so unhinged that they accuse him of being anti-vaccines, while simultaneously accuse him of having his kids vaccinated. To which he calmly responds that he just wants to investigate vaccine safety. It really is like he is opposing some holy sacrament, rather than calmly, rationally investigating what is good for children.
Simon.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Alberta, the province next to me, just released a 250+ page report reviewing all aspects of their covid response. I skimmed it and it looks well done. They are quite critical and back their concerns with footnoted evidence.
The report recommends stopping mRNA transfections, plus many other things.
The Alberta Medical Association has already called it misinformation and says it will damage confidence in the health care system. They provided no evidence for their concerns and apparently did not cooperate with the report investigators.
The report might be a useful resource if you’re looking for information on various covid topics.
https://open.alberta.ca/publications/albertas-covid-19-pandemic-response
LikeLiked by 1 person
We had a report done in New Zealand on our response, and it wasn’t great. However that report was commissioned by Ardern’s government, so our new government is also commissioning a second report. We are all quite excited to see what’s in that one.
Because New Zealand is such a small country, I personally know some things that are quite damning about our response. One thing I can share is that in the early ‘transfection’ days, many medical personnel (especially nurses) were given both shots at once!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow.
The covid insanity was caused by several powerful financial, political, and human behavior forces. One of the big ones I think is that healthcare professionals are not very bright.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I somewhat disagree. Most healthcare workers are quite intelligent. Most have had to take biology/chemistry classes and excel in them. BUT I think healthcare as a profession is EXTREMELY hierarchical. Doctors are as gods and not to be questioned. Poor public health doctors get no respect, pharmacists even less and nurses, physical therapists, and hospital technicians even less. Give any one of them a little power and look out below. I have a number of relatives that are pharmacists and they think everyone should defer to them on health matters. No lack of hubris.
AJ
LikeLike
Fair enough, maybe it’s an ethics issue. If most healthcare professionals are intelligent then they must have poor ethics because very few are speaking up to stop the harms still being done to children by bad covid policies. Or if they have good ethics, then they must be very stupid.
LikeLike
One interview upends a lifetime of work. How come none of us discovered that technology will overcome limits to growth, and that climate change is no big deal. Shame on us.
You can skip this one unless you’re looking for reasons to be hopeful.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Nate needs to stop mucking around trying to appeal to the LinkedIn muppets
LikeLiked by 2 people
I listened and kept thinking the same. Nate actually pushed back more than I’ve heard in most interviews. I think the key point was when Nate said “people that know you say your optimism and positive attitude influence your work” or something to that tune. In other words “strong you are in denial”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m sure Tinker’s successful. He’s got the confident patter down pat. Did you notice he had a smooth answer for every issue except the one that can’t be wished away with some vague future technology innovation?
That was when Nate discussed debt growing MUCH faster than the rate of energy growth. Tinker said he was concerned and rather than discussing the implications changed the topic.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I agree with a lot he has stated, but is the usual expert in not knowing or understanding complexity and where our modern complexity has come from.
It’s the usual lack of understanding the system that has the idea that because nuclear is a more dense from of energy, it’s just like other forms but better.
He correctly points out how we have moved to more dense forms of energy and why solar, wind and batteries wont provide a modern future, but makes the mistake in thinking nuclear being more dense is the answer.
He and everyone else that thinks nuclear is a more dense form of energy, misses the point that coal, oil and gas are dense forms of energy straight out of the ground. Nuclear isn’t!! The reserves of the largest Uranium mine on the planet by volume produced, is 0.45kg/tonne at Olympic Dam. In other words there is 999.55kg of ‘other’ rock that comes out of the ground.
Uranium straight out of the ground is useless, it needs to be concentrated , transported, then refined, then turned into the magic pellets he talks about, all done with fossil fuels. All provided by the complexity and size of our total civilization, provided by fossil fuels.
How does a nuclear world look if we can only use solar, wind and nuclear to build it, no fossil fuels at any stage in the process?? Non existent, totally useless..
The other aspect he totally misses is that we have never replaced older forms of energy, we just add more energy use on top, which is precisely why there is more wood used today than 500 years ago, more coal than 150 years ago when coal was king, more oil today than 60 years ago before we had much gas, or nuclear, or solar, or wind.
His other argument about how much oil is left in the source rocks around the world, totally misses the point about the energy and materials required to gather this oil, as if it’s infinite and costs the same as today. The materials themselves are becoming more expensive because they are more energy dense, taking an increasing quantity of energy to mine and refine into useful products and machines.
This likely means the concept of reserves is pointless, as we can only produce all the extra oil, gas and coal using today’s technology and cost. They never mention the cost is going up, so reserves of everything are going down
Like so many of these experts he just doesn’t understand the areas outside his area of expertise. He has faith in ‘technology’ yet fails to mention and probably understand, the law of diminishing returns of increased complexity in every aspect of human activity.
All the costs he mentions about nuclear in the US is because of the increased complexity of the system that is solving problems with increased rules and regulations. This is an aspect of complexity not understood. The western countries cleaned up rivers and the atmosphere because of increased rules and regulations to do anything, of which planning and building a nuclear reactor is part of.
If you want less complexity, then it will be across the entirety of the system. Reduce the rules and time for just building nuclear and expect more accidents and pollution from nuclear. BTW the newest Chinese reactors are way over budget and took years longer to build as well, it’s not just a western aspect. Reactors built in the early ’70’s were more than double the budget and years late as well.
We will only get his ‘nuclear’ future, with increased use of fossil fuels over the decades ahead, something which if possible, makes the planet unlivable and extends the sixth mass extinction, while acidifying the oceans, and increasing endocrine disruptors that combined will probably mean our own extinction along with most other life on Earth. People like Scott Tinker should be a lot more careful of what they wish for..
LikeLiked by 3 people
Nice critique Hideaway.
After listening to Tinkers’ optimism about fracking I spent a couple hours down a rabbit hole learning how directional drilling with downhole mud motors work. There’s a lot of very advanced materials and technology used in drilling today. Won’t take much supply chain chaos to disrupt the oil industry.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I was trying to imagine how the hell you can build a rig that can drill miles down and then miles sideways. I thought that’s some serious torque at the surface machine.
Here’s one rabbit hole to explore – https://www.britannica.com/technology/fracking
LikeLike
They use energy contained in the pressurized drilling mud that is pumped down the well string to rotate the drill bit. The drill has a slight bend in it that causes the bit to veer off center. The drill is steered by turning the well string to the desired orientation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Another thought I had, as he was talking about developed countries not being as polluted as those in ‘energy poverty’, was that’s because we’ve off-shored all our dirty stinking heavy industry to those developing countries. We just unwrap and use all those nice new shiny machines and ignore all the shit wages, shit working conditions and shit treatment of the environment where they’re made.
LikeLiked by 1 person